I’ve always heard how Die
Hard was the greatest action film ever and now that Die Hard recently became
available on Netflix Instant Streaming, I could finally see what all the
“hoo-hah” is about! So, is, in my opinion, Die Hard the greatest action film
EVAR?
Probably!
At the very least, it is definitely
one of the best action films ever. And while I’m tempted to analyze the entire
film, scene by scene, I haven’t the time or the OCD for it, so I’ll try to
focus on what I consider the central theme of the film to be and why it’s
unlikely any current action films will top it.
The film starts out with a plane landing. A businessman notices that the man next to him, John McClane, is looking nervous. He offers some advice:
“You wanna know the secret
to surviving air travel? After you get where you're going, take off your shoes
and your socks, then walk around on the rug bare foot and make fists with your
toes…I know, I know, it sounds crazy. Trust me, I've been doing it for nine
years. Yes sir, better than a shower and a hot cup of coffee.”
Once the plane has
stopped, John unbuckles, gets out of his seat and opens the overhead
compartment. The man notices that John has a gun and becomes frightened, to
which John replies, “It’s OK. I’m a cop. Trust me, I’ve been doing this for
eleven years.” He pulls out a giant teddy bear, walks off the plane, and the
title of the film appears.
This is the opening scene
of one of the greatest action films ever, and it fits the film perfectly.
Initially, I thought the
film was about Westerns. Y’know: a lone, nameless cowboy defends his town from
outlaws, except replace “cowboy” with “cop”, “town” with “building” and
“outlaws” with “men he thinks are terrorists”. John Wayne and John McClane
sound a lot alike, right? And Hans frequently talks down to John, comparing him
and his actions to old American Westerns, saying that he’s trying to embody
John Wayne. John disagrees and says “was always kind of partial to Roy Rogers,
actually.” When John finally gets radio contact with law enforcement, he
doesn’t give them his real name and instead, refers to himself as “Roy”. There
is certainly a theme of Westerns in the film, but it’s not the main theme.
The main theme of the film
is Miracles, or more specifically, Feet.
Ode to Joy, the final
movement of Beethoven’s 9th symphony, is present throughout the
film. The string quartet plays it during the party, Hans hums it when he has
Takagi captive, and the score itself contains elements of it. The film takes
place on Christmas Eve, which, as Hans points out several times, is when
miracles occur. Because there’s no snow, the film reminds us of what special
night it is by having sleigh bells pop up throughout the film, primarily
through the score.
The film even has halos
appearing numerous times. Granted, they’re lens flare rainbow halos, but I
think the director intentionally put them in the film to emphasize the theme of
miracles. Look at how many I found! Rainbow halos appeared in the film when:
·
John returns fire
at the Germans who interrupted his radio call on the rooftop
·
Al talks to
“Roy” for the first time
·
Argyle attempts
to drive into the building
·
Thornburg
reacts to the 1st building explosion
·
Hans starts
planting explosives
·
John tells the
hostages to get off the roof
·
John then leaps
off the roof tied to the emergency fire hose
·
John and Holly
leave the building at the end of the film
But miracles aren’t just
about pretty lights and beautiful sights; they’re about the unbelievable
happening.
Argyle is the limo driver
who picks up John from the airport. He admits to this being his first day on
the job. Waiting outside the building for John, he’s listening to music,
drinking, and calling up some girl, explaining that his boss thinks he’s on his
way to Vegas. Argyle does not seem like a dependable type of guy, but while in
the building’s parking garage, he notices an ambulance driving out of a large
black vehicle, figures it must be related to the terrorists he heard on the
radio, rams the limo into the ambulance, runs out and knocks the driver out
with a right hook.
The first time the
audience sees Al Powell, a rotund cop, he’s buying as many Twinkies as he can
carry. When he inspects the Nakatomi Plaza building and he only gets to the
elevators on the first floor before calling it quits. On the radio with Roy, he
admits that he just does deskwork now because he accidentally shot a kid once
and was never able to pull a gun on anyone since then. But when one of Hans’
men, somehow surviving being hanged with a metal chain noose, pulls a gun on the
McClanes, the police, and the hostages, while everyone else either screamed or
took cover, it was Al that pulled out his gun and killed him, saving everyone.
And don’t forget about
Richard Thornburg, a reporter for a local news station and a total prick. He
picks up police radio chatter about gunfire at the Nakatomi Plaza building. He
begs his boss to let him go and warns him that if he doesn’t get permission,
he’ll steal a van anyway to get the story. The news anchor mocks Thornburg, and
taking pity, Thornburg’s boss allows him to take a van. Thornburg doesn’t seem
to be treated with respect at the studio; however, his hunch pays off and he
gets the biggest story of his career, complete with visual footage of the
building’s multiple explosions. Of course, being a prick, he does threaten the
McClane’s nanny with Immigration Services in order to tell the McClane children
their parents might die and to interview them on TV, endangering both Mr. and
Mrs. McClane. Mrs. McClane even punches him when he attempts to interview her,
but he doesn’t care about his health. All he wants is the story, so after being
clobbered by Holly, he turns to the camera and asks, “Did you get that?”
Now onto the biggest
miracle of all: John McClane
The Audience learns that
John McClane is a cop from New York City, whose wife and kids moved to L.A. for
her job. John didn’t expect her job to last and didn’t go with them. This trip
is his chance to make amends with his estranged wife and give his kids a family
again. To make things more difficult, he has to, alone, defeat a dozen heavily
armed, professional “terrorists”. Let’s look into why they’re so scary.
The group consists of a
variety of people from different countries, but the majority of them are from
Germany. The scary part is not that they’re German, but rather that we don’t
know what they’re doing. When Hans and his posse walk into the party and start
rounding up hostages, neither the partiers nor the audience have any idea what
they want. Normally, the director would reveal this information by showing two
of the henchmen talking to each other, but he cannot: they’re all speaking
German to each other. There are plenty of scenes where the villains are talking
amongst themselves, but we haven’t a clue of what they’re saying. Occasionally,
they’ll throw the audience a bone and speak in English, but most of the time,
it’s just mysterious. We know they’re talking about doing bad things, but what
are those bad things?
Initially, because the
“Hans Gruber Gang” is so thoroughly prepared and professional, the hostages
assume that they’re terrorists; however, they are, in fact, thieves. Granted
thieves who are trying to steal $600+ million dollars, but still, on the
hierarchy of villains, terrorists would probably be closer to the top, and
thieves would probably end up somewhere WAY below…like right above “people who
double park”.
And then there’s Hans
himself. While all the other bad guys are screaming, firing their guns in the
air, and showing off their angry faces, Hans is cool, collected, and
calculating. When he was looking for Takagi, instead of grabbing someone and
threatening them, he merely walks into the hostage clump, weaving around
people, listing facts about Takagi’s life. Given how prepared they are, they
surely know what Takagi looks like, but instead, he’s having Takagi present
himself. Hans doesn’t need to beat his chest and roar; he’s so intimidating and
powerful, that the hostages implicitly understand it.
Hans is also an
intelligent man. Taking Takagi to a different floor, Hans points out the name
of Takagi’s suit, and quotes classic literature. Clearly, Hans is a thinking
man, but the one thing that really sets him as a character is when he sees one
of Takagi’s company’s project models and notes “”I always enjoyed to make models
when I was a boy; the exactness, the attention to every conceivable detail.
It’s beautiful.”
This is the scariest thing
about him. To Hans, the heist is a model, so every little detail is planned:
·
When Takagi
explains that the doesn’t know the code to the vault and that they’ll just have
to kill him, Hans says “OK” and casually kills him, because they didn’t even
need him for the plan to work.
·
They not only
plan for police/FBI involvement, but their plan is actually designed to work
because of it. When the FBI appear, he knew that they would cut the building’s
power, which would automatically open the last lock to the vault.
·
When John
McClane finds Hans unarmed, Hans does a fantastic American accent and pretends
to be a hostage. He even picks a name of someone who actually works there
(although John can tell he’s lying because that person worked on a different
floor)
·
Once Hans and
one of his thugs have John McClane cornered in a gun fight, he shoots all the
glass walls around John, knowing he’ll have to run through the pile of
shattered glass barefoot, making it more difficult for him to interfere with
Hans’ plan.
·
The only
detail Hans did not plan for was that a New York City police officer would have
attended the party and escaped before they rounded the hostages up, but how
could he have expected that?
John is obviously
terrified. When Hans and Friends first appeared, John peaks out of the door,
with his gun shaking in his hand. He frequently talked to himself in an attempt
to rationalize everything happening around him. (“Why the fuck didn't you stop
'em, John? 'Cause then you'd be dead, too, asshole. Think, godammit. Think!“)
Though he is a hardened police officer, he still has to develop a “tough guy”
persona to calm himself. (“Yippee ki yay, mother fucker!”) Given the
probabilities, John should not have been able to save all the hostages except
for two and defeat 12 terrorists, in spite of the incompetence of the L.A. PD
and the FBI. He even expects he will die and gives Al to tell his wife, Holly,
that he’s sorry.
So, how does John do it? How
does this Christmas Miracle come to be?
Simple. It’s his feet.
During the party, John and
Holly have a moment alone, and their conversation goes from awkward to angry,
yelling at each other for their broken marriage. They’re interrupted, and Holly
has to go make a speech for the other employees. Alone, John verbally beats
himself up for making their marriage worse, and he looks at a card his kids
drew asking him to come home, which keeps inside his wallet. Remember how in
the opening scene, John is told the way to survive a plane travel is by taking
his shoes off and feeling the carpet with his toes? John decides to take the
man’s advice and give it a try, because he realizes his strategy of trying to
fix his marriage isn’t working, and he’s willing to try anything. Being
barefoot gives him the sanity and clarity he requires not only to save his
marriage, but to also defeat Hans Gruber. Even at the end, when John ran out of
bullets, and Hans is hanging out of the window on Holly’s arm, readying his
gun, John is able to think quickly, and unlock her watch, sending Hans to his
doom.
I have seen the Hans
Gruber drop a million times online in .gif format before I ever saw the film.
When I saw the .gif, I thought that it looked goof. Yet when I was watching the
film, my heart was pounding, and I found that I was quietly muttering to myself
“Fuck. Yes.” over and over again as he fell. Which brings me to why modern
action films will not be able to outmatch it.
I was in a meeting with a
friend for a class group project, and, though I don’t remember why we wound up
on the topic, we were debating the Michael Bay Transformers films. I called
them dumb, sexist, and terrible. He claimed they were good films for what they were
trying to be: loud, stupid action films, and therefore, story or acting were
not needed. But that’s like saying it was OK that a person can be an uneducated
bitch as long as she’s hot.
The misconception with
action movies today is that the directors forget that the special effects are
supposed build on the story and the characters, otherwise, the special effects
fall flat. Let’s look at the Transformers films: Are the special effects
impressive? Yes. Do I care about the characters and is the story good? No. Did
I enjoy the film? No. Now let’s look again at Die Hard: Are the special effects
impressive? Not anymore. Do I care about the characters and is the story good?
Yes. Did I enjoy the film? Yes. It’s the reason why the original Star Wars
trilogy is timeless but the prequel trilogy will be poor and outdated.
Even though I'm pessimistic on the future of most blockbuster action films, but on the bright side, I can send out cards during the holidays that say "Yippee ki yay, mother fuckers! And a happy new year!"
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